“Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
Words to live by.
Right now I feel like Trump's last two months are going to play out one of two ways. He either does some really stupid, violent shit or becomes extra lazy and does one last smash-n-grab.
I'm leaning towards the second. He's gonna play a lot of golf. Leech whatever money he still can by going to his own properties. Sell some pardons. And who knows what else.
This is what you pay me for.
Trump’s tax records show signs of financial distress, he claims to have lost out on billions of dollars in income while in office and his eldest sons say the family business has forfeited dozens of potential deals across the globe.
Now, denied a second term by voters, Mr. Trump may seek to return to a once-lucrative career in television, this time with a decidedly political bent. His family business will also be free to make up for lost time by once again looking overseas, where hotels and golf clubs helped drive its growth before his election in 2016.
Eric Trump and a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization did not respond on Saturday to requests for comment on the business’s post-White-House plans. The president put out a statement disputing the outcome of the election, indicating that he did not believe he had lost.
After winning the presidency four years ago, Mr. Trump declined to sell off his stake in the Trump Organization, and instead adopted a plan that he said would eliminate conflicts of interest. Among other things, the Trump Organization pledged to forgo new deals outside the United States and hired an ethics adviser to screen certain domestic ventures.
Democrats and others argued that the restrictions were half-measures at best, and indeed the approach did little to prevent the president from turning his resorts and hotels into a hub of favor seeking for lobbyists, donors and corporate chiefs, as The New York Times reported in October.
Still, the presidency took a toll on the privately owned family business, which has not closed a new hotel deal since Mr. Trump entered the White House. The company shelved a proposed chain of budget-friendly hotels last year, and Mr. Trump’s financial disclosure statements showed that his top cash-generating properties had largely gone sideways. Without offering evidence, Mr. Trump claimed last year that being president was “probably costing me from $3 to $5 billion.”
The ban on new foreign deals probably dealt the biggest blow. Before the presidency, the company was eyeing a major expansion in China; it would even maintain a Chinese bank account and keep an inactive office in Shanghai during the presidency. It had also done exploratory work on new business partnerships in Colombia, Brazil and Turkey.
No longer constrained by its self-imposed ethics plan, the Trump Organization is now expected to seek hotel deals and other business, according to several people close to the company. Even so, there will be numerous obstacles to a rebound, including the coronavirus pandemic, law enforcement investigations into the company and a deeply divided view of Mr. Trump among the American public. Additionally, if Mr. Trump made another run for the White House in 2024, he might need to avoid new foreign entanglements that could provide ammunition for political rivals.
As Mr. Trump is poised to once again become a private citizen, here is the landscape for his family business.
Mr. Trump may begin selling his name again.
The fastest way for the Trump Organization to raise money is to flip the switch on its international deal machine, licensing the Trump name to real estate projects like hotels and residential towers.
When Mr. Trump entered the White House in 2017, Trump Organization executives said the company had left behind more than two dozen such branding deals, including in China, Israel and across South America. As Mr. Trump leaves office, he is popular in some countries, and his brand is widely recognized.
The branding deals are largely risk-free for the company because they do not require capital investments and generally make between $500,000 and $1 million a year, at least initially. The payments often decline after units in residential buildings are sold, unless the Trump Organization makes parallel agreements to manage the properties.
His company, however, still faces legal scrutiny.
While Congress may no longer be as focused on Mr. Trump’s business activities, prosecutors in New York will continue their investigations.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office is investigating Mr. Trump and his company for an array of potential financial crimes and is seeking his tax returns. The New York State attorney general’s office is conducting a separate civil inquiry into suspicions that the company misstated its assets, possibly to reduce taxes or obtain loans.
The company has denied any wrongdoing, but it may be reluctant to provide the investigators with additional deals to scrutinize. Eric Trump, who runs the company with his brother Donald Jr., last year cited scrutiny from Democrats and the media as a major reason for suspending plans to open a new line of hotels.
The investigations could also lead to negative publicity as the company is looking to expand.
A new stream of business partners may emerge with Mr. Trump out of the spotlight.
Over the past four years, Bobby R. Burchfield, a Washington lawyer, served as the Trump Organization’s ethics adviser, scrutinizing potential deals and business partners. The examinations made it difficult for some to pass muster, while others were scared off by the public attention.
That scrutiny will now fall away, opening a pipeline of new partners.
And with more than $300 million in debt coming due that the president has personally guaranteed, there may be some urgency for the Trump Organization to line up new deals. In addition, an adverse ruling in an audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service could cost him more than $100 million, The Times reported in September.
A polarized country and the pandemic could hamper a rebound.
Some of Mr. Trump’s most lucrative properties are in Democratic strongholds, like New York and Chicago, where he remains deeply unpopular. And his biggest revenue-generator, his Doral golf resort in Florida, has suffered from a drop-off in conference revenue as some big companies and organizations stayed away because of his divisiveness.
As president, Mr. Trump has tried to fill the gap, at least in part, through events booked at his properties by groups connected to him and Republican politics. The Trump International Hotel near the White House was often brimming with partisan allies.
It is unclear if that patronage will continue, or if Mr. Trump’s detractors will return to his properties once he leaves office. Additionally, it has been a tough year for the hospitality industry because of the pandemic, and the headwinds have hit commercial real estate, too. Both are central to Mr. Trump’s business portfolio.
There may be another presidential act for Mr. Trump or his children.
Mr. Trump, as of late, has privately raised the idea of running again in 2024. And the possibility of another Trump presidential run could have a chilling effect on his business in the intervening years, at least in countries like China, where a thicket of ethical and legal conflicts could arise.
The president also may not be the last Trump to run for elected office.
Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump may hold future political aspirations, and that could curb some plans for growth. The risks are greatest on the international front, where potential for conflicts of interest abound.
Finally, there is Mr. Trump’s love for television.
During his time in the White House, Mr. Trump put his eldest sons in charge of his company along with a team of other executives. But even before that, he had receded somewhat from scouting deals, letting his children take the lead.
Where and how Mr. Trump will reassert himself in the family business will be one of the intriguing questions surrounding his return to private life. A onetime reality TV star, he may instead return to television as a political pundit or in another role, those around him say.
There have been preliminary discussions about acquiring or starting a Trump-branded network, for example. His work on “The Apprentice,” tax records show, brought him new sources of cash and furthered a myth that would help propel him to the White House, The Times reported in September. Paid speeches and a book deal could also await him.
Thanks. This is from my phone so can't break each point down.
Again shows how stupid they are if they try to stay in the hotel business. He is debt, every bank should be scared now and don't want the scrutiny.
Selling his name is what he basically did anyways. For me his name is not bleep. But hey alot Trumpkins are sucker enough. Again in my first post he could make a good living off this, minus his financial and legal problems.
Oh him trying the hotels would/should be a failure.
TV seems almost easy if he get financial backers. New TV is not easy to and I say Fox News is strong.
Trump is a fuck-up. So in something where odds should be in his favor, he could set anything easy on fire.
Democrats are the best! I will never ever question a Democrat again. I LOVE the Democrats!
Now your having a hypothetical discussion that you can speculate all you want and still not get anywhere.
We at this time know two things: The limit of Republican voters
That Democrats can still achieve growth in terms of expending there voters.
Trump managed to get where he is because he doesn't have any shame and he is an idiot. A Tucker Carlson or a Ted Cruz might have no shame however both aren't idiots, at this point it's hard to imagine if they can achieve what Trump has.
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Frankly Biden himself should stay out of it there is no point in him involving himself in any of this.
His DOJ however should have an investigation as open as possible to look in the dealings of Trump and co, there needs to be a general cleanup of all the horrible shit the Trump admin has done and DOJ should be part of that cleanup.
Who in 2020 gives a flying fuck about what Hillary Clinton said in 2016?
She was never elected president. She holds no office. She has no political power. She has no special platform beyond that available to any other extremely wealthy person and Twitter.
I am not responsible for Hillary calling half of Trump supporters "the basket of deplorables". Nor am I responsible for all the Trump supporters deciding that they were in the deplorable half, and not there other, presumably non-deplorable, half.
GTFO with this nonsense.
But CAN he actually find buyers.
Remember, about 6 months into his term, hotels were removing his name, and I doubt they are going to want to change their mind. And without him being president, what can he offer them of value?
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well, Im still waiting for him to say which of the groups Hilary called "deplorable" arent.
"Law and Order", lots of places have had that, Russia, North Korea, Saddam's Iraq.
Laws can be made to enforce order of cruelty and brutality.
Equality and Justice, that is how you have peace and a society that benefits all.
Preface: I'm heading back to work at a reduced capacity starting this week as I continue to recover from the broken femur. It's only going to be half-days for several weeks at least but it'll mean less time for research and I'm probably going to be a wreck when I get back home. The bottom line is I might be restructuring how I do these updates to save me a bit of time, especially given that with the huge increase in cases there's been much more for me to sift through the past month or so. Might be shifting to a top-10 list as opposed to every state over 1k and then just list states that broke records. Might try a few different iterations this week and see what I like. Moving on...
102,726 new cases, around 26k more than last Sunday. This is the 5th straight day of 100k+ numbers and it looks like that'll be the case for a long while. That's a million new cases every 10 days or less.
Illinois: 10,009 new cases; 50 deaths
Fuck Florida.
Texas: 6,584 new cases; 39 deaths
Minnesota: 5,908 new cases (new record); 31 deaths
Missouri: 5,571 new cases (new record); 24 deaths
California: 4,975 new cases; 14 deaths
Indiana: 4,652 new cases; 39 deaths
Ohio: 4,541 new cases; 11 deaths
Wisconsin: 4,280 new cases; 11 deaths
Tennessee: 3,636 new cases; 5 deaths
Iowa: 3,368 new cases; 12 deaths
New York: 3,351 new cases; 20 deaths
Colorado: 3,017 new cases; 5 deaths
Pennsylvania: 2,580 new cases; 4 deaths
Utah: 2,386 new cases; 1 death
New Jersey: 2,236 new cases; 4 deaths
North Carolina: 2,094 new cases; 2 deaths
Arizona: 1,880 new cases; 17 deaths
Massachusetts: 1,823 new cases; 20 deaths
Georgia: 1,439 new cases; 1 death
South Dakota: 1,426 new cases; 13 deaths
Virginia: 1,302 new cases; 3 deaths
Nevada: 1,276 new cases; 1 death
Louisiana: 1,266 new cases; 20 deaths
New Mexico: 1,210 new cases; 14 deaths
Alabama: 1,205 new cases; 2 deaths
Washington: 1,193 new cases; 1 death
Kentucky: 1,177 new cases; 4 deaths
North Dakota: 1,101 new cases; 11 deaths
Maryland: 1,081 new cases; 11 deaths
Arkansas: 1,038 new cases; 17 deaths
Michigan, Oklahoma and Nebraska all failed to report on time but do normally report on Sundays, so the actual total is most likely several thousand more. Not too many records listed but also not many expected given that it's a Sunday. There's very little to report other than the trends of the past couple weeks appear to be holding--everything's going up everywhere and it appears to be happening at an accelerated rate. I'm actually a bit disappointed but not surprised that testing has not become more consistent across the weekends. It really should be a 24/7 thing at this stage but of course we're still in the TRUMP SHITSHOW so I doubt there are any resources allocated to make it happen. We're still nowhere near the 200 million tests per month we should be executing.
512 deaths is a little over a hundred more than last Sunday and brings the total to 243,768. Numbers for Sunday and Monday remain unreliable at best but the last time we passed 500 on a Sunday was mid-August.
Related news:
New York coronavirus positive test rate soars over 2% and records most daily cases in six months--New York was one of the few states still hanging on as this outbreak started but it's starting to get squirrely. 2% isn't terrible (the max recommended for keeping things open is 5%), but they'd held below 1% for a long time.
Texas records over 1 million coronavirus cases--I reported this a few days ago but other sources like Johns Hopkins have caught up. California is probably a week out from also hitting 1 million.
Stay safe, folks.
Last edited by Benggaul; 2020-11-09 at 02:31 AM.
Also, as someone already pointed out, Clinton didn't call Trump's supporters deplorable. She called the racist, sexist, bigoted part of his supporters deplorable. AND THEY ARE. And then the rest of his supporters decided that they wanted to be labeled with that too which really says a lot.
The Washington Nationals have invited President-elect Biden to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day in April next year.
That's gonna be some nice salt in Trump's wound, because you know he obsesses over shit like this and he's still steamed about Dr. Fauci getting to throw out a first pitch back in the summer.
“Leadership: Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.” -- Donald J. Trump, 2013
"I don't take responsibility at all." -- Donald J. Trump, 2020
Speaking of which, I wonder what Fauci's fate will be in all this. At least cursorily, he seems like a pretty upstanding dude just trying to do his job and keep people safe while his boss tells him constantly to shut up and people to not listen to him.
Perhaps Biden can integrate him into his response team.
“Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
Words to live by.
“Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
Words to live by.